Future of Fishing

Torcuil Crichton Excerpts

Tuesday 5th November 2024 Westminster Hall

[Rupert Lowe]

That was a very unhelpful intervention. Nevertheless, I will carry on as I was before.

It is interesting to note that after the defeat of Napoleon in 1815, in which Admiral Nelson, a proud Norfolk man, played a prominent part, British fishing had a golden century. My constituency, Great Yarmouth, is known as the herring capital of the world, with herring fishing at its peak between 1900 and 1913, when up to 12 million tonnes of bloaters were landed, processed and sold. Sales were domestic, with a prolific export of smoked herring going to both Germany and Russia. Mackerel, cod and sole off the Dogger bank were also prolific.

Since our membership of the EU, European fishing fleets have fished our waters heavily, using questionable methods such as electric pulse fishing, which damages the seabed and destroys biodiversity. Supertrawlers continue to plunder our waters, scooping up whole shoals of fish, including seabass, common dolphin, bluefin tuna and John Dory, driven more by profit than by conservation.

Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs marine management is allowing EU vessels to help themselves to our fish, unmonitored and unregulated. EU supertrawlers have destroyed fisheries off west Africa, have been banned in Australia and are causing controversy in Chile. Our EU membership severely damaged our fishing and fish processing industries, with the threat of breaking up our legacy fishing skills, permanently destroying our fishing expertise. Fishing and processing will require extensive investment, but the full return of our fishing rights in 2026 under the deficient Brexit arrangement will be a golden opportunity to rebuild both industries and revitalise our coastal communities, which have been overlooked and badly treated.

The model for this reconstruction has to be Iceland, which took control of her 200-mile coastal waters and is now a flourishing centre for fishing and fish processing, with a vibrant export market. Within two weeks of the now-forgotten cod war, we were importing Icelandic fish, to be processed in Hull factories, which were desperate for raw fish to keep their staff employed. Holland, France and Belgium have huge factories in rather the same way.

Europe has, by design, made Brexit very difficult for the UK. It has quibbled over quality, created uncertainty and filibustered in the hope that the UK will rejoin its failing post-war trade bloc, founded on a protectionist, socialist philosophy. It needs our fish. Currently the French have 92% of cod quota in the channel, and three times the British allocation of Dover sole, four times more cod and five times more haddock in the Celtic sea.

[Torcuil Crichton (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Rupert Lowe]

I am going to carry on.

Of the 35,000 tonnes of fish that arrive in Boulogne each year, two thirds come from British waters. There is an opportunity to rebuild the industry. One job at sea supports eight jobs on the land: processors, merchants, transport operatives, shipbuilders, welders, platers, electricians, carpenters, engineers, painters and other areas of expertise benefit. DEFRA’s inability to respond to the evolving industry is exemplified by the emergence of bluefin tuna in British waters. Quotas exist for only 40 tonnes, but 400 tonnes to 600 tonnes would help start the process of rebuilding.

We must ensure that fish are landed in our ports. An education programme must be undertaken to promote British fish. Tax breaks must be given for fishing boat purchases and processing factory construction. If the Government are intent on fulfilling their duty to the British electorate, we need to know their post-2026 plans for a rebuilding blueprint to benefit our economy and food security. Our £100 billion trade deficit was overlooked in our Brexit negotiations, which resulted in a border down the Irish sea and a threat to the sanctity of the Union. We need to know the Government’s intentions now. The Reform party has the blueprint for success, but it cannot be put in place without a committed intent to act in Britain’s best interest.

How can we move forward and ensure the fishing industry is properly protected and supported as it should be? We need to introduce a revised version of the Merchant Shipping Act 1988 to rebalance quotas and protect against quota hopping and foreign exploitation. We must speed up the return of the fishing quota to UK fishermen. We should introduce a fee or licence for foreign vessels—including EU vessels—seeking to access UK fishing waters, and the money should be invested directly in the UK fishing industry. We should enforce rules stating that all fish caught in UK waters must be landed and processed in, and then exported from, the UK, with the eventual rule that all fish caught by foreign vessels in UK waters will be landed and processed in the UK once the fish processing industry has reached sufficient capacity. We should ban foreign supertrawlers from UK waters.

[Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes) (Lab)]

rose—

[Torcuil Crichton]

rose—

[Rupert Lowe]

We should bring fishing communities and their generational knowledge into the policymaking process. We should guarantee sustainable stocks by working closely with national partners and regional organisations such as the North East Atlantic Fisheries Commission, and by implementing a dynamic management system. We need wholesale reform of the quota system and a ban on the commercial trading of fishing quotas. We should use stringent tax and provenance tests to prevent foreign owners from using a British flag of convenience. Crucially, we should ensure full British control over our exclusive economic zone.

The time has come for all Members of this House who represent coastal communities to come together to fight for British fishermen. We must unite and push this Government to restore full British fishing rights in British waters. Anything short of that would be an unacceptable failure.

--- Later in debate ---

[Torcuil Crichton (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Efford. I thank the hon. Member for Great Yarmouth (Rupert Lowe) for staging this important debate. As he would not take an intervention, I am forced on to my feet to make a speech, if only to ask him whether he is aware that two thirds of the UK’s fishing quota is owned by just 25 businesses, and that 80% of England’s fishing quota is in the hands of foreign owners or families who appear on the Sunday Times rich list each year. How we will resolve that foreign ownership of the fleet and the quota is a question that he must answer in his conclusion.

I come here fresh from the annual general meeting of the Western Isles Fishermen’s Association in my constituency. While fishing quotas are devolved to another Parliament, I think the principles that I will address—on which I might find common ground with the hon. Member —are points worth making. The Western Isles Fishermen’s Association looks on Brexit, as many of us do, as having just one glimmer of hope, and that is the return of fishing quota to the UK Government. It has led to additional fishing quota being available, at least for the next two years, and the distribution of that quota is devolved among all different Governments.

The Western Isles Fishermen’s Association argues, as I do, that that is a national resource and should be distributed in a system that is fair, and that takes into account, as the hon. Member says, the economic linkage between quotas, fragile coastal communities, and those that are adjacent to quotas. If the quota is distributed according to historical catching patterns, it will simply go to those on the Sunday Times rich list and the foreign shipping owners he so deplores.

On the historical track record, the distribution of quota would not give any opportunity to our coastal communities. The system has to be rethought, it has to be linked, and additional quota has to be given to municipal or local authorities in order that they can share or lease that quota to locally based boats and build up—as the hon. Member wants too—from very small beginnings a new pelagic fleet, new processing and a new future.

[Melanie Onn]

I am struck by the need for intense negotiation and good relationships, which will form the basis of a good outcome post 2026 and even of the structural reform that the hon. Gentleman describes. Does he agree that an adversarial approach, such as preventing people from intervening in historical speeches, is not the way forward if cross-party consensus and a collective view are sought to try to get the best out of our fishing industry post 2026?

[Torcuil Crichton]

I agree that we should disagree agreeably when it comes to common national assets such as fishing.

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

I am interested to see that the hon. Gentleman has rediscovered his distributist roots from Glasgow university. There are serious, practical considerations here to be faced before we get to the point that the hon. Gentleman would want to get to, which has significant force. Most skippers in my constituency, and in his, are carrying massive amounts of debt and loans. If we cut the feet out from underneath them in terms of quota reallocation and the rest, the law of unintended consequences could be really severe for the people who have kept that industry going through the lean times.

--- Later in debate ---

[Torcuil Crichton]

I thank the right hon. Member for that; as he knows, fishermen in my constituency look enviously to the north at the vast amount of value landings that have come from the Shetland field. But, if he looks a little further south than his own constituency, Orkney council owns prawn quota, which it then leases out to young fishers to get into the industry. I dare say there are enough fish in the sea, and certainly there is enough quota to be shared out, not to have a deleterious effect on his own constituency.

When the hon. Member for Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes (Melanie Onn) mentions 2026, I think of only one event, the Scottish Parliamentary election, at which I hope this will be an issue, but of course 2026 is also the time of quota renegotiation with the EU and Norway. I hope with the additional quota and in these negotiations, that we can find common ground and a way of sorting this out so that our most fragile coastal communities benefit from the resource at their doorstep.

--- Later in debate ---

[Richard Tice (Boston and Skegness) (Reform)]

It is a pleasure, Mr Efford, to serve under your chairmanship, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Great Yarmouth (Rupert Lowe) on securing this debate.

Boston has a long and rich history in fishing; indeed, fish landed in Lincolnshire ports constituted about 20% of all fish eaten in Britain in the 20th century. However, my fishermen in Boston have been let down by decades of European Union membership—they were delighted to leave the EU—and by over-regulation. In fact, they are deeply concerned about the regulatory pressures from the Environment Agency and from inshore fisheries and conservation authorities, which frankly seem designed more to strangle what is left of our fishing industry than to enhance it.

So 2026 is an opportunity for the great reset—an opportunity to take back control of our waters properly and to start again. We all know that the previous Government, under the leadership of Theresa May and then Boris Johnson, failed to secure the promised good deal for fishing, in the same way that they failed to secure a good deal for Northern Ireland.

In business, we all know that no deal is better than a bad deal, and that must be the starting position for the negotiation. EU members are desperate to start negotiating as soon as possible, but as the hon. Member for Aberdeenshire North and Moray East (Seamus Logan) rightly identified and as the Minister may know, there is a serious risk that they will use the renegotiation of the energy deal, which ends at the same time, to create unacceptable pressure and leverage for the fishing deal. It is therefore vital that the two elements are decoupled and that we work on the basis that no deal is better than a bad deal. Frankly, that is true for both those renegotiations, but they must not be linked, otherwise we will end up with a bad deal. I urge the Minister and the Government to start from that position.

[Torcuil Crichton]

I fear that the hon. Gentleman and his party might be targeting the wrong people when they blame the EU for the lack of fishing in British waters, because half of England’s fishing quota is ultimately owned by Dutch, Icelandic and Spanish interests. The problem is not access to waters; the problem is the concentration of ownership of the quota we already have. The way to revive communities, such as those in his constituency and Great Yarmouth, with which we have historical herring fishing connections, is to redistribute that quota and to make sure that the quota we have—that additional quota—is given to fragile fishing communities. It is about not keeping foreigners out, but making sure that the wealth of the seas is distributed fairly.

[Richard Tice]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that interesting intervention. The key to securing any distribution is having the quotas; then we can talk about distribution—and, yes, that can take time. But I repeat that no deal is better than a bad deal. If we allow ourselves to go into the negotiation on the basis that we must do a deal, we will end up with a bad deal. We have been there; we can do so much better. This is a great opportunity, so let us grasp it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Rupert Lowe]

First, I apologise for not taking more interventions during my opening speech, but I consulted widely with my constituents and they were keen that I got that message across uninterrupted. Secondly, I make no apology for going back over history. As Churchill said, “The farther you look back, the farther forward you can see.”

I will sum up the various contributions, which I think is my duty. The hon. Member for Ross and Cromarty—

[Torcuil Crichton]

Na h-Eileanan an Iar, but the hon. Member can say the Western Isles.

[Rupert Lowe]

I thank the hon. Member—my Celtic is not great. I thank him for his contribution and agree that we need a complete review of our fishing arrangements now that we have the ability to do that.

The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) made some extremely valuable points, particularly about visas. We have also talked about apprenticeships, which are incredibly important. I run businesses in electrical contracting, and we have a huge apprenticeship scheme. That is something we should be looking at for the fishing industry and the fish processing industry.

The hon. Member for Aberdeenshire North and Moray East (Seamus Logan)—